If you give out ESL stickers as part of your lesson plans, then these 7 awesome ideas to use ESL stickers might give you some new ideas to think about stickers as an educational resource. Who knows? Once you see how much these ideas increase motivation and confidence in students, you might even find some other new ways to use stickers in your English lesson plans.
It’s pretty safe to say that all kids love stickers! And the shinier and more colorful they are, the better! This means they can be used as an effective teaching tool to reward and motivate students. Unfortunately, many teachers simply use stickers as a reward and fail to take advantage of the extra potential stickers have.
There are tons of great ESL stickers with the ABCs, numbers, verbs, shapes, and other topics in the universe, but it’s important to have a solid system to use them with. BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries consist of 60 ESL stickers per topic and a series of laminated pages with a spot for each sticker. Getting stickers and finding where to put them on the Sticktionary card is a fun problem to solve, and it’s full of educational potential. Sticktionaries are also a convenient tool for teachers to use for warm-ups, conversation practice, grammar review, and even teaching new grammar and vocabulary through problem-based learning.
So, let’s go over the 7 awesome ideas to use ESL stickers in English lessons with BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries.
Try These 7 Awesome Ideas to Use ESL Stickers in English Lessons
Although these 7 awesome ideas to use sticker in English lesson plans use BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries, the ideas can be applied to any set of stickers that have a sticker passport or worksheet that incorporate the ideas below, so don’t hesitate to experiment and try new things.
Awesome Sticker Idea #1: Stick it where it the sun shines!
Many times, teachers reward students by giving them stickers to put anywhere where they wish such as on worksheets or books which then get tossed into a dark bag or lost in a pile of papers. Some teachers might go a step further and create a sticker passport or sticker chart, but that usually only comes out of their bags when they’re ready for a new sticker. Instead, try putting stickers on something that is a permanent part of the curriculum and used every lesson!
If students always get the same kind of stickers such as gold stars or whatever is sold at the dollar store (100 yen shop here in Japan), then they won’t be challenged to solve problems and learn. Instead, giving stickers of vocabulary words found in the curriculum to students in a random order challenges them to think about the words and find their correct locations on the Sticktionary cards.
This is one reason BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries are so effective! On top of that, there are nine random variations for the sticker locations, so they create a whole new world of problem-solving chances and speaking opportunities that don’t exist with common reward-based sticker systems.
Awesome Sticker Idea #3: Stick and repeat!
Another great thing about BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries is that there are multiple levels for each set of ESL stickers (ABC words, verbs, and more). The ABC Stickers can be used to teach new vocabulary, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and even spelling. And the Verbs Stickers can be used to teach present tense, past tense, perfect tense and more.
Awesome Sticker Idea #4: Start your lessons with stickers!
At our English conversation school in Japan, Step by Step Kids, we start our lessons with activities using Sticktionaries. Kids usually come to the classroom with a lot of energy and excitement, so giving them a sticker challenge right away helps get their English gears turning.
As soon as students walk in the classroom, the teacher collects their homework and checks to see that it’s complete. We also have an At-Home Challenge which is a great tool for incorporating Blended Learning with QR codes and the BINGOBONGO FUN!box. If the students complete their assignments, then they can sit down in class, choose three stickers on their own, and try to find the correct locations on their Sticktionary card.
This is a great way to start focusing on English right away. It also creates a challenge that helps review and learn new vocabulary. If students can’t find the correct locations for the stickers, then they can ask other students, utilizing peer-learning, or ask the teacher. It gives students an opportunity and motivation to communicate in English as soon as they walk in the classroom!
Awesome Sticker Idea #5: Use ESL stickers in your English lesson plans!
All levels of BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries have a target grammar section that can be applied to the ESL stickers for that level. These are great to use as a teaching tool in disguise since kids don’t think of stickers in the same way that they think about books or worksheets. You can easily practice counting, have a question and answer session, quiz students about the spelling of words, or even practice conjugating verbs and making example sentences depending on the Sticktionary level. And since all the students have different stickers on their Sticktionary cards, everyone can make unique English expressions based on their own cards.
Of course, you can do this with any kind of stickers, but if students are already familiar with the images from BINGOBONGO FUN!books, worksheets, posters, and flashcards, that’s a huge added bonus!
Awesome Sticker Idea #6: A big reward at the end of the stickers!
When students collect all 60 unique
stickers on their Sticktionary cards, they will be overjoyed from their big achievement. The is a great opportunity to give out a certificate or an even bigger reward. (We like to give our students a new
Battle Eggs Pet Deck for a reward that is full of educational potential.)
But did you know there’s a much bigger reward hiding in the finished BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries? Since the stickers are put on a laminated page, they will last for years as a handy picture dictionary that kids can use over and over again.
For example, the Sticktionary series for verbs has four levels covering the present tense, the present participle form, past tense, and present perfect tense. So, whenever students need to look up a word they’ve previously collected the sticker for, they can just pull out their Sticktionary and look up the spelling or grammar points.
Awesome Sticker Idea #7: Play some games with stickers!
BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries have two gray blocks with a 5×5 sticker grid. Many students will immediately see these as a challenge to try to get five stickers in a row for a BINGO as they collect stickers. This is just one more way that BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries motivate students to get excited about learning English as soon as they walk into the classroom.
These 7 Awesome Ideas for ESL Sticker are sure to be a hit in your English lesson plans!
